Paste Acquires Tracks' Subscribers

Deal triples magazine's base.

Atlanta-based Paste Magazine has acquired the subscriber base of the recently shuttered music magazine Tracks. The deal increases the three-year-old Paste's paid subscriber base from about 15,000 to 50,000 and bumps its advertising rate base to 120,000.

"For Paste, this dramatically increases their circulation immediately," Tracks CEO John Rollins tells Billboard.biz. "And it's a good move for our subscribers, I believe. Paste and Tracks are more similar than they are different, certainly in spirit."

Paste's August/September issue will feature Death Cab For Cutie on its cover and will be the first to be serviced to Tracks subscribers. The magazine, which also covers film and pop culture, has recently profiled such acts as Billy Corgan, Stephen Malkmus, Matisyahu and Shelby Lynne.

Each issue of Paste also comes with an 80-minute CD featuring in excess of 20 songs, most by artists covered in the magazine. "We feel like Tracks subscribers are getting more for their money," Paste publisher Nick Purdy tells Bilboard.biz. "If they're owed four issues of Tracks, they'll get four issues of Paste."

As for the New York-based Tracks, which launched in December 2003 and ceased publishing in May, the deal provides funds "to help pay final bills," according to Rollins. "Some of it will be applied to some Web efforts we're embarking upon."

Among them is a revised Web site (Tracksmusic.com) that will feature a Podcasting service independent of the magazine's affiliation with Paste. Rollins says the initiative will launch "imminently."